


fates, intertwined

by Ffwydriad



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Implied/Referenced Abuse, coda to c2e110, non linear, standard warnings for the blumentrio's backstory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:40:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26534509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ffwydriad/pseuds/Ffwydriad
Summary: "and the boy lost his mind, never to think his own thoughts again"or, pieces of Eodwulf.
Relationships: Astrid & Eodwulf & Caleb Widogast
Comments: 5
Kudos: 83





	fates, intertwined

“I’ve invited Bren and his companions for dinner,” Master Ikithon tells him. “You and Astrid shall accompany me.”

“Yes, Master Ikithon,” Eodwulf says. He bows his head.

* * *

He’d been surprised by how much Caleb Widogast had looked like Bren. He looked older, yes, but still, he was recognizable. There was a tiredness to his face, one that came not just from age, the same that both he and Astrid had, but just like them, he mostly hid it well.

“You look good,” he says. 

Bren always was the most handsome of them, and time has not changed that fact. But more than that, he had always had the brightest fire behind his eyes, and it was still there. 

Eodwulf is less certain, whether any fire has burned behind his eyes in quite some time.

* * *

The first time he heals himself, he has no expectation of the act. He offered a prayer to the Matron, but he did not ask for life - alone and far from home, he had prayed that the death that was quick upon him would be a merciful one, swift and painless.

Had he expected an answer? No, not really. But the Matron found his prayer and refused to grant it, and instead, he healed himself, not much, but enough to press onwards.

The night around him was not as dark - the way before him not as hard.

As soon as he was back in Rexxentrum, he found himself a holy symbol - a raven feather, wrought of silver, and prayed to her. 

* * *

Astrid sits at Ikithon’s left hand. Caleb Widogast sits down beside her, so Eodwulf takes Ikithon’s right - or tries, at least, before the halfling dashes forward, and is suddenly sitting in the chair. 

He pushes the chair in with too much force, before he gets control over the anger. He’d never been as skilled as Bren or Astrid, when it came to games of power, better to cut an intimidating figure and wait for action. He does not do the same, for the tall woman, but he can tell his face is not as tightly controlled as it should be. 

Caleb Widogast’s face has the stifling of a laugh, but it isn’t the laugh of someone who’s planned this, there’s too much surprise. Not a play on his part, then, just one on the part of his friends. It shouldn’t be as much of a relief as it is.

The - the pink-haired one pulls out the next chair, this time, instead of waiting to claim it from him. “For you,” he says, an easy going smile across his face. 

“Thank you,” Eodwulf says, and sits down. 

He doesn’t look at Master Ikithon, nor does he look at Astrid. 

* * *

He doesn’t visit Bren in Vergessen. 

That isn’t to say he doesn’t see Bren. He sees Bren, over the years, in the halls or - but he doesn’t visit. If Astrid does, she never says. 

Master Ikithon never says they cannot. He never calls Bren a failure, either. But they - well, they’ve long been trained to recognize a trap when they see it. 

Eodwulf never returns to Blumenthal, either, although this too has no rules against it. Instead, he sits before the temple of the Matron, and he does not pray.

* * *

He doesn’t know what to make of the pink haired one. The others, they are easier to read, from what he remembers of the first time, but this one - 

“A vegetarian,” he had answered, with the same easy grin he had offered, pulling out the chair. He is quick with words, better than Eodwulf has ever been, but he lacks the sharpness of it. 

The rest of them, he can hear the daggers that lie beneath their tongues, sometimes if not always, and it is - it is a dangerous game, taunting Ikithon, but less dangerous, he supposes, given the relative amount of power they must hold. It’s familiar, in a way that is by no means comfortable or simple, but that he’s used to.

  
  


* * *

Eodwulf does not look to Master Ikithon except when he is speaking. Astrid does, frequently, worried checks on how he reacts to the less than subtle insolence the Mighty Nein present him with, but Eodwulf knows better. He looks to Astrid. She is the more skilled, at the playing of these games.

“Our parents made a sacrifice, yes,” he says. “Like any soldier does, on the battlefield.”

Caleb Widogast frowns, at that, but doesn’t speak. 

* * *

He is not a front line soldier, but he is quite used to battlefields, and battlefield dead. 

He passes over them, as he _scouts_ , battles small and large. Some of the dead are collected, others left to rot, to be scavenged over or eaten by the animals. 

The Matron has no rites, for days old corpses, and he is not so stupid or sentimental as to take any time to bury them. But he prays for them, anyways, prays for the dead and those who are soon to die.

He doesn’t pray for himself. There isn’t much of a point.

* * *

“Do you think,” Astrid asks, after Bren’s escape, “that we will cross paths again?” Her voice is quiet, in what might be an attempt to keep others from hearing, pointless, really, or because she doesn’t have the strength to speak it louder, to hear the words herself.

“I hope we will,” he says. “Our fates were once intertwined. They may be again.”

Does he pray, to the Matron, for it to be so? It would be a foolish prayer. Killing Bren would intertwine their fates, as would Bren killing them, and both seem far more likely than any outcome that doesn’t end with someone dead.

* * *

When Astrid kills her parents, she invites all of them in to watch. He had seen them in Blumenthal before, but he had not known them. He gets to, somewhat, as they sit there as dinner guests. It’s a drawn out scene, but not as much as it could have been, he supposes. They die quietly, at least.

When Bren kills his parents, he puts on a show of it. He has them help - they bar the door - but they never step foot inside the house, never see the people who are to die. Instead, they watch him start a blaze. They hear the screams. 

It’s the screams that break Bren. He wonders if Astrid would’ve been the same, if she’d had to hear her parents scream, heard them begging. He’s not certain if her parents even realized that she had been the one to do the deed herself.

Eodwulf kills his parents alone. He has them wait outside for him, no audience, no show. They have the chance to scream, the chance to beg and plead, but not for very long. He kills them quickly.

He doesn’t know the rites of the Matron as well as he one day will, but he knows enough of them.

Did it break him? Not in the way it broke Bren, he knows, but later, he thinks it must have, in some way, left him a hole that would never be filled. But orders - well, he was always good at those. Or bad at the alternative, he supposed.

* * *

Caleb Widogast asks them to come drink with him.

They used to do this often, after Ikithon. Sit in the corner, passing a bottle of liquor between them - always something hard enough to hit them, after everything. Around them would be hosts of students and civilians drinking large kegs of ale and beer, a crowd of strangers with no idea about what they’d been through, what they’d done. They had reveled in it.

He hands the bottle to Caleb Widogast, who hands it to Astrid, who hands it back to him. It’s familiar. 

* * *

He was the best of them, at handling the crystals.

It was just pain. He could handle pain.

It was everything that wasn't pain he handled worse than them.

* * *

Bren was always Ikithon’s favorite, always his chosen. It’s not surprising, to hear the way it’s been played out, manipulated. He wonders, for a moment, if he or Astrid had been the ones to break, would they have been the same? He doubts it. 

He wonders if Caleb Widogast really believes, that Astrid was to be the one to take Ikithon’s place. He wonders if he says that honestly, if he isn’t playing some game, if he is surprised by the fear that hides in Astrid’s eyes, at the grin that curls on Ikithon’s face over this new bargaining chip he has been freely handed. He wonders if Caleb intends to damn her with his words, if that is who he is, now.

He wonders if the favored status is enough to protect the group for their disrespect. He doesn’t doubt it would, but the final words - 

The pink haired one must be a cleric, he is quite certain, and he almost feels like one who follows the Matron, in the way he says those final lines. He likes him, likes the way he plays the game with no daggers under his tongue. He doesn’t want to see whatever punishments Ikithon might be imagining, for what has been said. 

It doesn’t matter. He isn’t the one who will get punished, for this dinner, and he will follow whatever orders have been given to him. 

* * *

He clasps a hand on Caleb Widogast’s shoulder, and hopes their fates will cross again. 

It isn’t a prayer. It doesn’t need to be.

Bren’s bright eyes stare back at him, sad and strained but still with a fire burning behind them.

**Author's Note:**

> i wasn't expecting to get feels about /eodwulf/ out of this episode but here we are. 
> 
> i'm @malaismere on tumblr, feel free to hit me up if you ever want to talk!


End file.
